During storms clouds cut solar panel productivity (unless hail destroys it) and wind turbines have to shut down in high winds.

The whole interview was part of a presentation at Stanford late last year:

Cheap renewables won’t stop global warming, says Bill Gates

The interview by Arun Majumdar, co-director of Stanford Energy’s Precourt Institute for Energy, which organized the conference, can be watched here.

When financial analysts proposed rating companies on their CO2 output to drive down emissions, Gates was appalled by the idea that the climate and energy problem would be easy to solve. He asked them: “Do you guys on Wall Street have something in your desks that makes steel? Where is fertilizer, cement, plastic going to come from? Do planes fly through the sky because of some number you put in a spreadsheet?”

“The idea that we have the current tools and it’s just because these utility people are evil people and if we could just beat on them and put (solar panels) on our rooftop—that is more of a block than climate denial,” Gates said. “The ‘climate is easy to solve’ group is our biggest problem.”

If he only looked at the numbers in the climate science debate…

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Rating: 9.3/10 (98 votes cast)

Gates on renewables: How would Tokyo survive a 3 day typhoon with unreliable energy?, 9.3 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

Tell him he is dreaming. The SA battery would offer no production benefit to Tomago. The demand is 950MW. The HPR can only supply 100MW for one hour. Even if it could pump out 950MW it would only do that for 5 minutes.

I am not certain of the Tomago cell ability to go into sleep mode but if they have that then 100MW might just keep them from freezing for an extra hour. Typically the cells take about 4 hours to freeze to an unrecoverable state.

I think he is refering to a reserve to save the pots ie dump the molten fluid before it destroys the pot. Not sure it would work as you would need to automate the process to save a pot line. Cheaper to have a gas turbine in reserve.

A BIG one. Or lots of little ones. Roughly 1000 HPRs. Each HPR would require 1,740,000 Samsung SDI ICR18650-22P cells or 1,740,000,000 cells for the entire Melbourne or Sydney battery.

Current Price for these cells, sold in small quantity, is USD3, That equates to USD500/kWh, which is similar to the installed cost of the HPR in SA.

A fair estimate for a battery for Sydney or Melbourne to supply just 24 hours would cost a little over AUD1tr. A good slice of Australia’s annual GDP for just one city.

But then Australia has the diversity fairy to sort out small inconveniences like this. The diversity fairy would enable
supplying all cities from a single super battery because only one city would be without sun for a day on any particular day. If the diversity fairy did not deliver then “load management” would need to be exercised as we saw in Victoria last month.

That is a high cost.
It is slightly higher than the amount we are forking out for NBN – and that is before you get it connected.
But in this wonderful apathetic country of ours, no one seems to worry.
After all, we don’t seem to mind paying three times as much for power as we should be.

The recovery period to full capacity will be extended because of the need to recharge the batteries. They are a net consumer of energy and also compete with consumers for available energy when they’ve been depleted.

Latus, martyrdom or excommunication? Neither. No way. He throws lots of money at the “climate change” question they will simply ignore his occasional inconvenient outburst. He’s only talking about numbers anyhow…

Gates is a notorious miser, and neither his private fund, Cascade, nor his foundation would invest principally in green or pink fluff. He’s been a heavy direct or indirect investor in all the things he condemns (yes, coal too). I’m guessing this “outburst” is cover, because guys like Gates and Buffet put their money where it gets returns. A bit of disinvestment or back-dooring from time to time, but the money stays in the earners, not the yearners.

I’m not concerned by any of this, except that he is a declared enemy of my country through his participation in the War on Coal. Nobody has as much to lose as Australia through talk of zero emissions, especially as the war is directed against domestic consumption even while allowing massive mining and exports. That makes Gates my enemy, as much as Tom Steyer, who made his dough out of our coal then, as soon the price tanked, became overnight field marshal in the war on my country’s primary resource.

Here’s the offer: surrender our number one resource and advantage, namely, domestic coal consumption, for no good reason, and the globalists will give us absolutely nothing. And while they continue to invest in coal and exploit coal, we can sit in the dark.

Maybe Gates realizes that if the rich westernized world moves to intermittent electricity supplies then all that technology from which he makes a fat profit, is in jeopardy.
Currently people buy many Microsoft products and services, when electricity becomes less reliable then the need for such fancy products diminishes as people have to decide what is truly needed and what is not.

As I don’t use MS Windows (or any MS products), does it still survive a power outage badly?

A 2016 Berkeley laboratory report for the US government estimated the country’s data centres, which held about 350m terabytes of data in 2015, could together need over 100TWh of electricity a year by 2020. This is the equivalent of about 10 large nuclear power stations.

UNSW: ‘Unless we find a new form of electronic technology that uses less energy, computing will become limited by an “energy crunch” within decades. Computing already consumes 5% of global electricity-& that electricity load is doubling every decade.’

The processors in the biggest data centers hum with as much energy as can be delivered by a large power station, 1,000 megawatts or more. And it can take as much energy again to keep the servers and surrounding buildings from overheating.

Eirgrid estimates indicate that by 2025, one in every 3kWh generated in Ireland could be going to a data centre.

US researchers expect power consumption to triple in the next five years as one billion more people come online in developing countries, and the “internet of things” (IoT), driverless cars, robots, video surveillance and artificial intelligence grows exponentially in rich countries.

According to a 2016 study the ICT industry could use 20% of all electricity and emit up to 5.5% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2025. This would be more than any country except the US, China and India.

Research might help but until then-WINDMILLS?

More likely all data centres will have to be as close as possible to the North Pole as some already are…using run-of-river hydro.

Well, we were 3C overnight and early today and do have the stove going; ridiculous or not! The forecast was for 6C min.I’ve felt cold in February before (and on Boxing Day some years) but 3C is a good one. After being in the high 30s and low 40s not long ago!

The labor/greenie/watermelons will scream, getup will have all the school kids on the streets again, Tim Flim Flam will have kittens, gore will probably have shares in it, the climate change advisors will go berserk, aunty and msm will go into convulsions and the cross bench will cut the throat of the deal just before it is signed!!

How come teachers condone these children wagging school for a demo but penalise parents who want to take their children out of school for a holiday that parents can’t take any other times?
We took our primary school aged children out of school when our visiting secondary aged boarding school children were here in order to take the chance to explore Australia and their holidays didn’t much coincide.The travel was educational in itself.

The Left, as we both know, is entirely comfortable with rank hypocrisy. Come to think of it, were they not being hypocritical they would not be of that ideological persuasion.
It runs in the family; it’s a dominant genetic trait.
Their Green comrades exhibit the same characteristic.

“Supercritical plants can be found in 18 countries and are now the norm for new plants in industrialized nations; USC steam cycles are now the state of the art. A current coal-fired plant operating with a high-efficiency USC steam cycle not only has improved efficiency, but is also more reliable and has a longer life expectancy.

Whereas the first supercritical units were relatively small (typically less than 400 MWe), larger units of up to 1100 MWe are now being built based on USC technology (such as the Neurath USC lignite-fired plant in Germany) and even larger units are planned.

Developments in AUSC steam cycles are expected to continue this trend. AUSC coal-fired plants are designed with an inlet steam temperature to the turbine of 700–760°C. Average metal temperatures of the final superheater and final reheater could be higher, up to about 815°C. Nickel-based alloy materials are needed to meet this demanding requirement. Various research programs are underway to develop AUSC plants. If successful, a commercial AUSC-based plant would be expected to achieve efficiencies in the range of 45–52% (LHV [net], hard coal).”

Bill could have used another example, such as the recent ‘cold wave’ (now renamed ‘polar vortex’) that hit the American Midwest. During the worst time on Thursday 31st January, MISO (Midwest Interconnection System Operator), the major supplier, was relying primarily on fossil fuels (79%) to keep their consumers from freezing to death.
Here is the breakdown of their supply that day:
Coal: 49%
Gas: 30%
Nuclear: 13%
Wind: 5%
Other: 3%
Solar: nil

If you have a Tesla 2 battery or similar your PV system will not shut down during a blackout.
It has a gateway and inverter so it can disconnect from the main grid
Then the main inverter sees it as grid power.
So you can use PV and battery power, as well as charge the battery as normal.

SMA’s Secure Power Supply does something that no other grid-tied solar inverter without added storage can: provide power during a grid outage. Solar professionals have been talking about this amazing feature since its inception with the Sunny Boy TL-US and our data shows consumers love it.

The first generation Tesla Powerwalls would turn off upon loss of grid but that was altered for the second generation.

As “load management” becomes common practice in Australia, the solar installers will use this aspect in their sales pitch so the ability to keep powering if the sun is shining will be useful however not particularly practical without a battery because a cloud will disable output and there could be difficulty restarting unless all connected appliances are soft start.

Theres alot of ignorance about power from solar, even perpetrated by installers. The panels supply an invertor (Panel DC to DC for the battery) AND DC AC for the household mains. With no battery then it is direct solar to AC through an invertor. In that case if the sun dont shine the AC isnt generated = no power.

Even some globalists have worked out that mass population reduction through natural disaster won’t be such a tidy affair. (I suppose when your private investment firm and your charitable foundation invest so much in Exxon, Coca-Cola, private prisons, McDonalds, the usual…well, you’re bound to have a practical streak.)

Exactly what is the point of this “mix” that is supposed to be a “solution”? I get that you can’t run the whole country on coal, but there shouldn’t be wind turbine in sight anywhere coal is abundant. Except for that clunky old thing pumping up water from a river for the cattle.

And expensive imported diesel (you know, the stuff they fight the wars for) is for putting in your truck. Let’s get more of that domestic coal and gas happening, people.

but it will go in one ear and out the other of the “renewables” enthusiasts.

Yes..I have met many of them over the years..
Even one that had been “schooled” by Big Al himself.
ALL of them drove fossil fuel powered cars
ALL of them were connected to the grid
ALL of them were 100% clueless about anything I asked about climate etc
ALL of them wanted

“the guvment has got to act now or we are doomed”

The problem is..the majority of government backed scientists..who drive cars and use coal for their energy in their houses..have been telling everyone for so long that

“we gotta change now”

and the bovine media repeat the same message for so long…that the masses can no longer think straight.
We truly are doomed..

A while ago I had lunch with an old work colleague. In his working life he appeared a smart guy. He worked as an expat for years in Hong Kong, managed projects across Asia Pacifc and was a valued employee until retirement.

He totally beleives the whole AGW scenario. When I asked a few basic questions it became quite obvious he had never looked further than the mainstream media, and just believed quite deeply in all the BS being feed to him. I pointed him to some alternate sources of information , but not convinced he wants to hear anything else.

Bill Gates can afford to “say it like it is” on the subject of renwable energy.
Of course he’s absolutely correct but will others have the guts and the gumption to follow?
Let’s hope Bill’s message gets out there.
GeoffW

Not a fan of what Gates did to the world of computing, but he’s no fool. I expect he’s well aware of the weakness of the climate catastrophists’ case but (wisely) chooses to attack the very weakest part of their case — the “solutions”.

Gates said. “The ‘climate is easy to solve’ group is our biggest problem.”

Think about that statement for a moment. He’s talking about the people who have lumbered us with subsidised windmills and solar panels, stupid batteries and super-expensive electricity. Gates has it spot on. Whether or not you believe the global warming prophets, the people who flog these non-solutions are the biggest problem.

No, it’s a specific subset, it’s the “Geoengineers” the numpties who “know” how to save the world!
When real scientists and engineers openly admit they do not know or fully understand the universe, galaxy, sun, earth, atmosphere, biosphere and climate
But these guys DO = let’s make mindboggling huge changes to the air, oceans etc., let’s terraform it!
Got no idea what the consequences will be but it is such a neat idea!!

I wouldn’t pick out that subset. Sure, people seriously talking about spraying sulphur compounds into the high atmosphere or foil into space are completely off their rockers, but what actual harm have they done? I think most are just playing SciFi fantasy games in their heads, and I have viewed, e.g. Flannery’s statements on these points to be childish threats — “either you invest in my hot rocks scheme or it’s out with the sulphur pumps”.

Many have died due to expensive/unavailable electricity. Has anyone been hurt by geoengineering speculation?

Anyhow, Gates’s point is that renewables are not a part of a rational solution. It would be huge progress if believers and heretics could agree on this.

There is no such thing as Climate Change. The proposition, the only proposition was that the world was warming because of man made CO2. Climate Change is a further projection of what is not proven. Extreme events is an even more extreme projection. None of these three things is proven to anyone’s satisfaction, but we are told about Climate Change, Climate Crisis, bushfires, droughts, floods and even record freezing cold are a consequence of an alleged 0.5C warming in 50 years?

In reality in Melbourne, we have had the coldest summer in my memory. I thought it cruel to send children, little children back to school at 37C heat every day. Cruel. Even when at school, you could do little without airconditioning. It was a survival course for teachers and pupils. For the sake of waiting two weeks, we could have had lovely weather. I thought it was cruel and thoughtless.

Today it was shivering weather on the Melbourne foreshore at 13C. Grey skies. Cool wind. Giant tour ships wondering if they had landed in Antarctica. Where is our +0.5C we were promised?

Why are we continuing to destroy the entire country to prevent something which is not happening?

It shows that if you repeat a lie often enough, long enough, it becomes the truth. Man made Global Warming is a lie. After 30 years of this, despite enormous effort and cost and tens of thousands of people, man made Global Warming is not proven and the whole world at 0.5C a decade was supposed to be +2.0 degrees hotter and at 10 metres per decade the oceans perhaps 30 metres higher. Not even 3 metres. Not even 30cm. Perhaps 3cm. So why is this still being said?

Now Americans are told to surrender to Socialism to save themselves. Now who seriously believes that? Not even the Democrats. On the other side of the world, in Berlin the AntiFA demonstrated against Jews at a film about the Jewish Holocaust. The last violent AntiFascists in Berlin were the communists. The assault on Western democracies, freedom of speech and minorities just continues. Climate Change is a made up thing.

Update. Melbourne now has reached 22C. +9C in a day with the sun up. You have to think it obvious that the sun is the sole driver of temperature, not CO2. Still, it is a very cold February for the two hottest weeks of the year, as it has been for the last decade. Of course that’s just the weather while we are told the ‘Climate’ is getting hotter. As in America. I call shennanigans.

TdeF, unlike Melbourne, it has been warmer north of the Divide for a few weeks, more like 5 years ago. The summers in between were cooler with no day that reached 40C, rather to my surprise, as we always had the odd day or two of 40C. It was 2009 when we last had much heat. As I very much dislike the Australian summer I have no complaints when it is a bit cooler!
The last two days have started cold and it feels much more like Autumn.

“Clean up China for the poor who suffer and die in the pollution resulting from rare earth extraction for turbines and solar cells.”: Sorry thats fake news. NO Chinese die from some rare earth extraction.

What problem are they (and that probably includes people like Bill Gates) trying to solve? We already know it’s not global warming because man-made runaway global warming is a hoax. I suspect the “problem” they are trying to solve is there is a realisation by more and more people the renewables “solution” is a scam and that realisation will rise exponentially over the coming few years. So they are now in panic mode and trying to find another “solution” to crush that growing realisation. Dangerous times dead ahead.

About time someone started to think about the cost of the unreliability of energy from renewable sources. Not the cost mentioned in a blog a few days ago, that renewable energy adds 30% to the cost of energy from fossil fuels

One I can think of is that people and businesses would have some sort of backup, like a generator to be used when the power goes out. The generator costs money to buy and store as well as testing and operating. Not much use having a generator, not test it then find, when it’s needed, that it doesn’t work. That’s the money side. Then there’s the environmental aspect of operating a generator which probably puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than the equivalent from a reliable coal generator.

Another is the wastage from spoiled food when the power goes off, again money, and environmental, and possible health. Some people might say insurance would cover the wasted food, but it’s still a cost regardless of who pays for it.

SA has roughly 6% of Australia’s electricity demand.
It has installed a “BIG Battery” which on its own could supply SA for (theoretically)
4 minutes during lower levels of demand and 2 minutes on a very hot day.

The total cost hasn’t been disclosed although there are estimates of $150 million.
Let us assume that the cost was $100 million as AGW believers keep saying that the cost of batteries is dropping (despite Tesla’s recent price rise).

That means to supply Australia it would take $600 000 000 000 just for 24 hours, and don’t ask about on hot days when that figure would double, or 3 days of overcast low wind days.
And you would need to allocate an extra $60 billion each year for replacements, a WHOLE NBN every year.

So what of pumped storage? Older readers might take sardonic pleasure in the abrupt U-turn by the Greenies on building dams. They do take time and cost money, but the real question is will they work? It is important to realise, unlike a lot of Greenies, that pumped storage DOES NOT generate electricity, it merely stores it at a loss of about 25%.
Older readers may have observed, or heard that Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains. I am sure people in North Qld. don’t need reminding on the latter point. But to act as a store there has to be lots of water available to pump uphill, which is highly unlikely during a drought. Then when the rains come the dam may be full and the potential for storage will be slight, until some water is released. So really you need 2 dams, and transfer the water between them as thought needed. Double the construction cost and evaporation and don’t release any for irrigation (rising food prices) or restoring natural rivers (e.g. the annual Snowy river flush out).

Has anyone ever said that is what Horndale is there for? If not you are arguing with yourself in the corner. My take is that it is for FCAS and to play price arbitrage games while it waits, to generate income.

It pays to be distrustful of the news baron who talks a conservative game and gives you Turnbull, the climate authority who embraces skepticism to keep you close to the IPCC corral, the moderate/lukewarmer who suggests a better class of white elephant…

And you really have to watch out for an economic hard-head who says:
“We need solutions, either one or several, that have unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability. I really only see five [technologies] that can achieve the big numbers: carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear, wind, solar photovoltaic, and solar thermal.” Bill Gates

And this:
“Until we get to zero [carbon emissions], the temperature of the planet will continue to rise, so we need to get to zero.” Bill Gates.

Now, everybody gets carried away at TED talks. But I’m seeing contradictions here. It’s a bit like the Gillard government’s enthusiasm for Latrobe Valley coal…provided it was on its way to Vietnam. Not so “durrrdy” after all, especially if a lazy 100 million gets tipped into a CCS boondoggle and the locals get clobbered with a carbon “price”.

No. I’ll listen to Bill once he makes up his mind. Is he covering himself because of all those investments in the naughty stuff? Or does he mean it?

14 Feb: AFR: National electric car network should be a top priority, says Infrastructure Australia
By Jenny Wiggins
A national fast-charging network for electric cars should be built in the next five years, Infrastructure Australia has declared as it outlined its top priorities for 2019.
Lack of access to charging stations is a key barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles, with Australia still having less than 800 stations nationally – only 70 of which are “fast charging” and give cars enough power to travel 400 kilometres in 15 minutes…
“Electric vehicles are going to be a game changer in terms of improving our national productivity as well increasing our environmental sustainability,” said Anna Chau, Infrastructure Australia’s acting chief executive…

Australia is lagging other countries in developing infrastructure for electric cars, with only about 2300 electric vehicles on the roads even though some car manufacturers, such as Volvo (which is owned by Chinese manufacturer Geely), are planning to phase out internal combustion engines…

Wikipedia: Infrastructure Australia
Infrastructure Australia is an independent statutory body providing independent research and advice to all levels of government and industry on the projects and reforms Australia needs to fill the infrastructure gap. The organisation publicly advocates for reforms on key issues including financing…
Infrastructure Australia was established in July 2008 to provide advice to the Australian Government under the Infrastructure Australia Act 2008. In 2014, the Infrastructure Australia Act 2008 was amended to give Infrastructure Australia new powers, and to create an independent board with the right to appoint its own Chief Executive Officer. The amended Act came into effect on 1 September 2014…
Julieanne Alroe was appointed to the position of Chairman of Infrastructure Australia in September 2017…

Wikipedia: Julieanne Alroe
Julieanne Alroe being interviewed at State Library of Queensland at part of their Game Changers series, 27 November 2018
Julieanne Alroe is a leader in the Australian aviation industry. She has over 40 years of experience in the aviation and one of the few women to have run a privatised airport…
She completed a Bachelor of Economics at the University of Queensland…

Infrastructure Australia: ***Anna Chau is the Acting Chief Executive of Infrastructure Australia and the Executive Director of Project Advisory. Anna leads the on-going development of the national Infrastructure Priority List (IPL) and the assessment of project business case submissions which are considered by the IA Board for the IPL…
She is a leading applied economist in infrastructure with 27 years’ professional experience, specialising in transport economics. Anna was previously Chief Economist at AECOM Australia and led AECOM’s national Economics team.
Her previous positions include Principal at Booz & Company, Executive Director of EY’s Economics team in Sydney, and Senior Manager in the business development group at a major train operator company in the UK.
She has led numerous cost-benefit analyses and business cases, as both a practitioner and a reviewer, in a range of infrastructure sectors, including transport, water and waste, energy, law enforcement, justice, IT and the environment…

14 Jan: RoadsOnline: Infrastructure Australia appoints new CEO
Infrastructure Australia has named its new Chief Executive Officer as the organisation prepares to release the Australian Infrastructure Audit in mid-2019.
Romilly Madew has been appointed to the role and has been recognised by the Infrastructure Australia Board as a leader in the property and construction industry.

Ms. Madew has led the Green Building Council of Australia since 2006 and has experience as a CEO with strategy, governance and policy development.
As CEO of the Green Building Council of Australia, she represented more than 650 companies with a collective turnover of $40 billion, and presided over the Green Star rating system that has been used in more than 2250 projects across the country.

She has also held Board positions with the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council, Sydney Olympic Park Authority and has been part of a number of ministerial panels, including the Cities Reference Group, National Urban Policy Forum and the China/Australia Services Sector Forum…
***Infrastructure Australia Acting CEO Anna Chau will continue in her role until April 2019, where she will then resume her role as Executive Director of Project Advisory…

‘Enough power to travel 400km in 15 minutes’….gosh, that’s a fast car!
Yes, I know what that was really trying to say.
Where is all the electricity to fast charge all these electric vehicles going to come from?! We’ve already had some big blackouts without many of the little electric toys on the road.
I am somewhat amused that Volvo are talking about phasing out ICE cars. That might make our 12-year old V70 quite a valuable antique one day!

So at the start of the thread, Gates correctly says that Tokyo would be toast if it was 100% reliant of wind and solar.
In his own blog Gates is all about solving the problems caused by AGW. Could it be that the 2 minute snippet is not a fair representation of his stance?

There are no problems caused by AGW except the response to that MYTHICAL scientifically unsubstantiated piece of fantasy.

It is the response to the AGW farce that is doing all the damage to societies, electricity supply systems, and economies all over the world. (it has helped China’s along, because they have played the game of providing what the AGW scam wants.

You KNOW that there is zero actual evidence that atmospheric CO2 causes warming or affects climate in any way, so why keep on parroting your mindless BS ? (unless you are purely pathetic trolling for attention)

Bill Gates is telling us we should stop emissions from everything, such as cows, mining, agriculture, transportation, not just power generation. In other words he is asking us to stop living. He is either a globalist conman or an ignorant buf00on. He really has to be more of the latter because countries like Russia, China, India and Japan would rather go to war than to follow his absurd ideology. No way will they reduce let alone eliminate their emissions. Instead they are building hundreds more coal fired power station as a whole. His speech even sounds like it’s tongue-in-cheek, and probably is, which makes him a globalist con man and an ignorant buf00on.

Perhaps. However, don’t expect China, India, Japan and many other countries to cancel their projects to build in total many hundreds of new coal fired power stations. Even if fusion power generation becomes a reality we will be among the last ones to adopt it, unless of course we are taken over by say China who probably will be the first ones to adopt it. Lots of ifs and buts. How about we just join the rest of the world and start building more coal fired power stations? I know – in my dreams.

The battery has a total generation capacity of 100 megawatts, and 129 megawatt-hours of energy storage. This has been decribed[sic] as “capable of powering 50,000 homes”, providing 1 hour and 18 minutes of storage or, more controversially, 2.5 minutes of storage.Dec 4, 2017

The battery cannot supply all its energy in 2.5 minutes. Convert to fire and smoke maybe. The electronics and the cabling and the batteries would not tolerate it. It can only supply 100MW. It is the equivalent of trying to pull 312 Amps out of a 10Amp domestic socket. (78/2.5 is 31.2).

People are scared of nuclear because of the cold war and that it makes things glow in the dark.
I tongue in cheek tell the gullible climate change people that I know that you can always tell when power is generated by nuclear as it makes light bulbs glow in the dark.

Vanadium stores electricity as solution in tanks so the capacity can be quite large, but the energy density isn’t any higher so no use in portable (or vehicle) devices. It also has a problem with self discharging (as do Nickel Cadmium batteries), so needs a trickle of charge regularly.

If the batteries were of carbon super capacitor variety, even though they take more space, i would be all for them. Superior environmentally in every way compared to lithium mega toxic batteries and their toxic manufacturing process/etc

The SA battery typically provides up to 30 MW for 5-15 minutes, then zero for a similar time. See nemweb station HPRG1. Believe it makes money through frequency balancing (FCAS) and load balancing for Horndale windfarm.

It’s about time the engineers and businessmen got involved in the debate. The climate scientists and those who believe in their global warming predictions, believe that going to energy from renewables, and getting rid of energy from fossil fuels is the way to stop climate change, regardless of cost. Engineers would look at the same scenario and say, because of the unreliability of energy from renewables, it’s not practical to get rid of energy from fossil fuels, how do we provide reliability and minimise the use of fossil fuels

..reliability and minimise the use of fossil fuels.. we DONT minimize use of coal, especially gas (not fossil). They are needed to provide base power at full load in ALL conditions, as Tony has pointed out numerous times with REAL data on supply loads.

Engineers need to make a living. Wind and solar generation require a lot more engineers than coal fuelled generation. A modern power station requires no more than a handful of engineers in the operation and they will have access to call in expert consultants not on the payroll as needed.

Think of the hordes of engineers involved in getting solar and wind projects up and running then maintaining them. All the fancy documents for environmental approval as well as public consultations. The energy transition is an absolute boon for engineers and component manufacturers.

If all states manage 50% market share with wind, solar and storage then electricity price will double from where it is now. Only about 50% of the cost goes off shore. The rest is required to maintain all the new dispersed infrastructure and interconnectors. That is a lot of engineering salaries.

“As Gates says: Let’s not jerk around. You’re multiple orders of magnitude ” So true, I think guys like Gates often let the cat out on their true understanding. Whether hes a true ‘believer’ or just going with the ‘Agenda’ for political purposes and his ‘foundation’ is another thing.

Until people are told the truth about these three renewables of choice (Wind power, solar plant power, and rooftop solar power) then the myth that renewable power can run the country, or even reach the unobtainable 50%, will be self perpetuating.

(Here, the actual generated power is extrapolated back to equivalent Nameplate from the current Capacity Factor for each source)

However, at the minimum power consumption time of the day at around 4AM, and that’s 18000MW, that percentage of generated power delivered by coal fired sources rises to 81%. Without that 18000MW, then Australia will just ….. stop.

Those generating percentages actually surprise me because I had not done the numbers recently.

It is interesting to look at how the market changes. I have seen it in business over a lifetime where technology has made certain businesses and industries obsolete. The business managers do not appreciate how small changes can quickly accelerate to make a business model obsolete. My first internet purchase was made 20 years ago this year. These days my first place to shop is the internet. None of my children have land lines to their homes.

In 2013 TonyfromOz wrote:

Look carefully at that image in Joanne’s Post and notice that yellow part that indicates the TOTAL power supplied to ALL Australian consumers from Wind Power.

That comes in at 2% of supplied power.

That’s from around 1100 huge towers coming in at a Nameplate Capacity now of 2260MW.

So in just five years the market share of wind has more than TRIPPLED and it is still accelerating.

Many households and some businesses are paying less for power than they were 5 years. That means the rest are paying a lot more because internmittents have doubles the wholesale price over the last decade. That will encourage even greater uptake of roof top solar for those owning a roof.

In another 5 years it should be obvious that grid scale intermittents will have deteriorating returns even with generous subsidies. The distributors will have their hands full handling reverse power flow from rooftop systems. The grid will need a massive boost in storage capability to handle the public expectations for generating lunchtime power into the grid. The retailers will be between a rock and hard place where increasing service charge will incentivise off-grid power systems.

The grid was dead economically once it permitted intermittents to connect. Those stuck on the grid will be exposed to the new norm of “load management” – there is no wind and no sun then do not expect power unless you have your own source.

Fundamentally there is no Trump in Australia to shine a light on the insanity.

Do not underestimate Tony Abbott. Crippled by Greens like Turnbull and Pyne and the ‘Black Hand’ inside the Liberals he was booted out but he is staying the course. Getup and the Greens and the Turnbulls would not be still trying to get rid of Abbott and Kelly if they were not the two biggest threats they have.

The upside of real power figures against nameplate is that we will achieve the notional 50% renewables without as much cost as 50% of real steady deliverable guaranteed power.

Even if so called ‘renewables’ were free like coal, this notional ’50% renewables’ will only supply <10% of the power and so reduce CO2 by <10%, so it's all massively expensive high farce which will achieve nothing but will make a lot of parasites rich. Like the whole thing.

No intermittent don’t reduce CO2 they increase it. Rooftop solar reduces CO2 by the CO2 equivalent of just 1/5 of nameplate because it’s light on materials and doesn’t displace sinks. Add a battery and the added materials and losses through the battery system make them emit more CO2 than they save. So if rooftop solar was 10% the CO2 saving is < 2% because of the CO2 debt in the product.

And of course Tony, when peak power of 33,000 MW is required late afternoon/early evening, solar and wind may be delivering as little as 500-1000 MW from that 15,000 MW nameplate capacity. What a waste.

A. The energy is shared with other molecules including WV molecules via thermalization. Because of steep population decline with altitude of WV molecules, they radiate much of the energy directly to space (in addition to the pressure decline of about 30%, global average fraction declines from about 15,000 ppm at surface to about 32 ppm at 10 km (-50 °C)).

CO2 has little if anything to do with climate. Water vapor increase does but WV essentially stopped increasing in about 2002. Global Warming is essentially over.

Earth will always have weather and any extreme is now synonymous with Climate Whatever due to increasing CO2 reportedly caused by burning fossil fuel.

I suspect the only thing that will disprove the fairy tale is for fossil fuel use to continue increasing but CO2 levels to stabilise and possibly fall. That is a possibility because cooling oceans will absorb more and increasing vegetation locks up more.

Whenever radiant energy is transformed to thermal energy or high intensity thermal energy of vibration is transmitted to other molecules the intensity of any eventual reradiation is lowered.
It’s technically referred to as loss of virtue.

I agree. But does this have anything to do with the Green House Effect?

Yes, according to Bill Nye, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock and the Mythbusters.

This is an important point, or so I think. Is the IR energy thermalised, or is it returned to the surface , with the lower atmosphere unchanged?

So if CO2 has equilibrated with the local atmosphere at say 11,000 metres altitude (T -35C) there is no way that it can radiate its energy, IR, to a warmer place like the ground (T +10C).

Radiation can only go from a point of higher potential to one of lower.

As Will J would point out, there are other finer points to the physics but the broad brush view in nature is that radiant energy moves down the slope of the temperature gradient.

Very few of the truisms used by global warming advocates have any credibility.

The only scientist that I know who supported the “greenhouse effect” is Arrhenius and he’s been gone for 100 years. Also, if I recall correctly, he went back on his idea about the role of CO2 before he passed away.

A problem I see with such hypothetical arguments is that they leave out what really happens with energized molecules — they’re excited, they’re vibrating a bit more, and could be more likely to collide into other molecules. When any IR excited molecule bumps into another molecule they can loose some energy making it IMPOSSIBLE for the CO2 to radiate the remaining energy as IR. This is because CO2 can only radiate it’s energy as IR at specific quanta (not less). They remain just very mobile molecules.
So some of those CO2 molecules will never reradiate IR because they have had collisions before they have time to radiate. How often does this happen?
I would appreciate a link to empirical science that shows what the answer is, and how it varies with atmospheric pressure (i.e. atmospheric hight).

Andy, I go into this in Section 4 of my blog/analysis (click my name). I include links to sources of relaxation time (about 5 microseconds at 310 K which decreases temperature increase) and average time between collisions for a moleclule of about 0.0002 microseconds.

KK – The original graph is from NASA. It looks OK to me. I have generated many like it using MODTRAN and MODTRAN6. It has been verified with TOA measurements, some before the current version of the programs.

13 Feb: Times-Picayune: Pope Francis’ climatologist visits New Orleans
By Sara Sneath
The Rev. Eduardo Scarel is best known for his role in advising Pope Francis on climate change. As such, he’s been dubbed the Pope’s climatologist. A Carmelite priest and atmospheric scientist, Scarel was in New Orleans earlier this week speaking with high school students and to an audience at the Notre Dame Seminary Tuesday evening…

Why does the Pope need a climatologist? “Because the care for environment, for nature requires to see the state of the planet,” Scarel said. “And the tools of science provide the best way to see.”…
While not all priests are atmospheric scientists like Scarel, he said they should speak with their parishioners about human-induced climate change. “It’s a matter of global justice,” he said. “We now have many nations that are suffering the direct impacts of climate change.”

What’s more, Scarel said church is a good venue to talk about carbon emissions because curbing emissions requires changing culture. “From the faith we can provide our people strength enough in order to make important changes in our lifestyles,” he said. “Because climate change is related with lifestyle, with patterns of consumption, with the throwaway logic in our culture.”…https://www.nola.com/environment/2019/02/pope-francis-climatologist-visits-new-orleans.html

13 Feb: WindPowerEngineering: Los Angeles to phase out natural gas in favor of more renewables
By Michelle Froese
Mayor Eric Garcetti took a powerful step forward this week in L.A.’s movement toward renewable energy, announcing that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) will not repower three coastal natural-gas power plants. The decision to phase out the units — which together represent 38% of the city’s current natural gas portfolio — by 2029 will accelerate L.A.’s transition to 100% renewable energy and put the city on track to meet its carbon-neutral target of 2050…

13 Feb: Politico: Michael Bloomberg’s $500 million anti-Trump moonshot
The sum represents a floor, not a ceiling, on the billionaire’s potential spending to defeat the president in 2020.
By MARC CAPUTO
If he runs, he will use that half-billion-dollar stake — roughly $175 million more than the Trump campaign spent over the course of the entire 2016 election cycle — to fuel his campaign through the 2020 primary season, with the expectation that the sum represents a floor, not a ceiling, on his potential spending…
“That’ll get us through the first few months,” Kevin Sheekey, a top adviser to the former New York mayor, told POLITICO when asked about the $500 million plan, which is just 1 percent of Bloomberg’s estimated net worth.

“Mike spent $100 million in his last New York City election. And you can do the math as you think more broadly but New York City is 3 percent of the national population,” Sheekey said. “I’m not suggesting it’s straight math. But I’m suggesting that when Mike Bloomberg is committed to making a difference and seeing something though, generally speaking he’s pretty unabashed in doing so.”…

“Five hundred million is just an obscene amount of money. It’s crazy, enough to buy up all the TV ad inventory in the seven or eight states that really matter in a primary,” said a Democratic consultant familiar with the plans who privately shared information from a conversation with a top Bloomberg adviser…

Progressives also doubt his Democratic bona fides for having backed Republican candidates in the past, supporting the stop-and-frisk New York City policing policies that disproportionately targeted African-Americans and supporting gas and oil pipelines that leave some Democrats doubting his commitment to fight climate change — despite his commitment of $218 million to help cities reduce their carbon footprint while also financing the Sierra Club’s unprecedented Beyond Coal campaign that has shuttered 282 coal-fired electricity plants…

“When people learn about his involvement in climate change activism and gun safety, and when they learn that he’s not just a billionaire — but he came from a middle-class background and his dad never earned more than $6,000 a year, and you talk about the work he’s done on the ground and his philanthropy — Dem primary voters view him favorably,” said one Democrat familiar with the polling…

12 Feb: MiamiHerald: AP: The Latest: California Gov. says he’s committed to rail line
The Latest on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s State of the State address (all times local):
5:50 p.m.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office says he is fully committed to building a high-speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
That’s despite his comments Tuesday that there “isn’t a path” right now for the project.

He said during his State of the State speech that he’s refocusing on finishing a segment of rail in the Central Valley that’s already under construction. Newsom says he’ll complete the environmental reviews for the full line. That’s a stipulation of federal dollars the state has already received…
Newsom said the project would cost too much and take too long. But his spokesman Nathan Click said he’s not walking away from it…

11:50 a.m.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is creating a new commission on homelessness and housing to address one of California’s most difficult problems…
The Democratic governor said in his first State of the State speech Tuesday that it’s a moral issue that has also become a public health crisis.
He cited mental illness, drug abuse and recent disease outbreaks and has proposed spending $600 million for homelessness care…

11:35 a.m.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he’ll have a plan within 60 days for dealing with the recent bankruptcy filing by Pacific Gas & Electric after years of devastating wildfires…

He’s promising to ensure that safe, affordable power will continue to flow…

13 Feb: WaPo: A Democratic governor just quashed Democrats’ dreams of high-speed rail in America
by Colby Itkowitz
On Tuesday the dream got its harshest blow yet: California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced he was scaling back plans for high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco…
But Newsom during his State of the State address said the project as planned was too costly for the state and so for now they’d just be completing a shorter leg through the Central Valley as to not squander the $3.5 billion the state received from the federal government for the project…

“Abandoning high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions and billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises, partially filled commitments and lawsuits to show for it,” Newsom said. “And by the way, I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump.”…

13 Feb: American Thinker: Robbery in Broad Daylight: California kills 73% of bullet train, keeps 100% of taxes
by Chriss Street
Facing another cost spike, Gov. Gavin Newsom stunned a joint session of the Democrat-controlled Legislature by proposing to slash the 520-mile voter-approved and taxpayer-funded system that would have stretched from Anaheim through the Central Valley to San Francisco, while keeping the 119-mile stretch from Bakersfield to Merced…

Über-environmentalist Tom Steyer teamed with his Next Gen Climate to saturate to the airwaves in Democrat districts for weeks with $7.3 million in ads promoting Ocasio-Cortez’s green manifesto that promises to stop sea level rise and extend life by replacing fossil-fueled cars and airplanes with zero-carbon high-speed trains manned by millions of local gender-neutral union workers making high and sustainable wages.

But Newsom may also have been desperate to stop a voter initiative being circulated by Reform California to divert high-speed rail’s billions of dollars in annual taxes and fees to local government to rehabilitate the state’s crumbling highway system…

Anti-tax crusader and Reform California chairman Carl DeMaio blasted Newsom’s speech as an effort to fool voters into believing the high-speed boondoggle was dead:
“Make no mistake about it: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement today is not about killing the wasteful High-Speed Rail Project, it is about keeping it very much alive. Newsom wants to spend tens of billions on a rail line between Merced and Bakersfield — a complete waste. Once this segment is done, politicians will argue that no one is riding this route because it doesn’t travel far enough and voila: the entire project will continue.”

12 Feb: Sacramento Bee: ‘The science is clear.’ California lawmakers say Green New Deal will fight global warming
By Andrew Sheeler
Hotter summers. Colder winters. Mega-storms and massive droughts.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a grim picture of how ***global life will change in the 21st century as a result of human-caused climate change…

TWEET: Donald J. Trump: California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars. They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a “green” disaster!
13 Feb 2019

TWEET: Gavin Newsom: Fake news. We’re building high-speed rail, connecting the Central Valley and beyond.
This is CA’s money, allocated by Congress for this project. We’re not giving it back.
The train is leaving the station — better get on board!
(Also, desperately searching for some wall $$??)
13 Feb 2019

I meant this as a separate post but was put in comment 5 replies above. My mistake (yes I do make them. Often!

Bill could have used another example, such as the recent ‘cold wave’ (now renamed ‘polar vortex’) that hit the American Midwest. During the worst time on Thursday 31st January, MISO (Midwest Interconnection System Operator), the major supplier, was relying primarily on fossil fuels (79%) to keep their consumers from freezing to death.
Here is the breakdown of their supply that day:
Coal: 49%
Gas: 30%
Nuclear: 13%
Wind: 5%
Other: 3%
Solar: nil

I am not an Electrical Engineer, but I’ve half electrocuted myself a couple of times in my hobby, and I happily stand to be corrected, but the HPR is a 100MW/129MWh battery.
I read this as the maximum draw from the battery is 100MW.
More than that would, I assume, cause catastrophic overheating.
The maximum capacity of the battery is 129MWh.
So, at a draw of 100MW, and a capacity of 129MWH, the battery would last 1.29 hours.
I mention this as some commenters are saying the battery would last a few minutes. I understand this to not be the case.
The thing is, of course, not only is it only 1.29 hours, but the load can only be 100MW. Lots and lotsa people gunna miss out!
In particular, the Tomago Aluminium Smelter was mentioned here, but RickWill was right onto that like a Foxy on a rat! The load cannot be supplied!
However, my friends, it is not correct to quote the battery lasting a few minutes. Our poor, moronic, renewable power disciples, may just pick up on that, and quote some figures from the specs, that says it will last an hour or so. What they will not mention, is how few the beneficiaries are of that hour.

It was rushed in by a desperate premier in SA to prevent blackouts in the next summer. According to Nemweb, 30 MW is regularly used in 10 minute bursts. But he hedged his bets and also purchased and installed 277 MW of diesel generators.
According to Wikipedia:
The 100 MW battery is divided into two parts: 70 MW running for 10 minutes (11.7 MWh) is contracted to the government to provide stability to the grid (grid services) and prevent load-shedding blackouts, while other generators are started in the event of sudden drops in wind or other network issues. 30 MW for 3 hours (90 MWh) is used by Neoen for load management to store energy when prices are low and sell it when demand is high.

worth noting who was a Board member at Infrastructure Australia (comment #20 & replies):

22 Jan: TheFifthEstate: Alice Thompson leaves KPMG, hopes to move to Canberra
A big job change promises potentially big things in sustainability options and climate change… or at least a shakeup.
KPMG will have a tough time finding a replacement the equal of its departing cities director Alice Thompson.
The front page of The Sydney Morning Herald this morning (Tuesday) had Thompson announcing her tilt into politics, challenging no less than Warringah in Sydney’s northern beaches, former PM Tony Abbott’s seat.
This is good news. Thompson is a strong supporter of sustainability (while Abbott is its nemesis) and she’s had a background deeply embedded in science and biophilia…

Her former roles, in the prime minister’s department as senior advisor on cities and infrastructure (with Malcolm Turnbull), as economic development director in the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet, and as a director in ***Infrastructure Australia, would have been an excellent training ground for this next step…

Photos and information about her are in short supply. And already some on the Twittersphere were questioning whether she was a “true” independent and instead of a closet Liberal, much in the vein perhaps of the criticism thrown at Kerryn Phelps at the Woollahra by election. Last time we looked though, Planet Earth didn’t much care what side of politics you were on, as long as your decisions were in its favour…

2 Feb: SMH: Malcolm Turnbull’s former staffer (Alice Thompson) pulls out of Warringah contest to back Zali Steggall
By Peter FitzSimons & Bevan Shields
In a move designed to maximise the chances of defeating Mr Abbott at the May election, Alice Thompson told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age she would withdraw from the battle and move her campaign to the adjoining northern beaches seat of Mackellar…

LinkedIn: Alice Thompson, Independent Candidate for Mackellar
Previous:
KPMG Australia; Office of the Prime Minister, the Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP (Nov 2015-Oct 2017);
NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet..
Director Major Cities Unit, Infrastructure Australia and Department of Infrastructure and Transport Nov 2008 – May 2013…
Director, and various roles
Australian Bureau of Statistics
2004 – 2008
End to end statistical services across economic, demographic and environmental collections…
Education:
The Australian National University, Bachelor of Science (Hons), Geography 1997 – 2001
UNSW, Master of International Law and International Relations 2008 – 2009https://au.linkedin.com/in/alice-thompson-45791738

OT and rant but
Up the shed trying to remove a rusted bolt when on the ABC drive at 3.00 they have a guest , our version of Bill NYE non other than Dr Karl who is reporting from Antartica.
I know straight away this is a set up for AGW so I’m trying to get that rusted bolt out quick smart but then I hear it , when the ocean goes from a ph of 8.2 to 8.1 the ocean becomes acidic .
Then I talk to someone in the education system and find out that what they taught to kids in year 8 4 years ago they now teach to year 10 students and now I fear it’s just a matter of time before crops will be watered by a sports drink and the IQ of the planet goes down to Peter Fitzroy and ahh gee’s level .
Which is essentially zero .

That’d be the program hosted by the chap who claims to have a degree in physics and boasts of his inability to perform mental arithmetic; Doctor Karl has a chance of sounding smart in that company, lord knows he needs it.

Bill, as admirable as your tenacity is, you need to accept some realities of life.

1. Climate change is a third order problem, 0.5degrees (1.5 degrees above preindustrial) is not going to harm anything, based on current rates of change we have hundreds of years to wait even for 1 degree of change.

2. As you now note what orifice are we going to pull out plastic, steel aluminium, silicon, cement, bitumen without oil.

3 We have bigger problems, the root cause of most of the poverty in the world is the unavailability of electricity. Most of the human condition evils, even Ebola are exaggerated because energy (particularly for refrigeration) is scarce. If the UN wanted to solve poverty it couldn’t do better than building and operating coal power across the third world.

4 money wasted on this third other non problem could be applied to third world health issues, we might even have cured cancer by now if the trillions dumped into impractical wasteful renewable energy were spent on medical research.

Bill, you have access to smart people, even the odd electrical engineer like myself, it’s not hard to do the math around climate alarmism, CO2 adds just 0.6Watts per square meter on top of an ambient 340watts per square metre (average) from the sun, that just 0.17% extra retained energy, and entropy ensures this isn’t going to increase evaporation more than 0.17%, make storms more than 0.17% worse or melt more than 0.17% more ice, it can’t do all three. The energy is very small and there is only one lot of it, once it’s expended in one effect, it’s not there for the other claimed effects.

Wake up and smell the roses, this is a dead end. Please, Bill, use your wealth in less wasteful ways than trying to change the weather. Perhaps by building resilience against the weather by providing cheap reliable energy into the third world. (After energy comes sewers, water reticulation, sealed housing, climate control, clean cooking, and filtered sterile water, and then sterile hospitals too cool for Ebola to survive for long.)

It revealed that Thunberg’s school strike had coincided neatly with the launch of a book about climate change written by her mother, Malena Ernman.

Is this a coincidence? It looks less like one when you learn from the same article that the first publicity of Thunberg’s protest came via the social media of the book’s PR man, Ingmar Rentzhog, on the day of its launch.

14 Feb: LawyersWeekly: NSW Bar shuts down ‘judicial overreach’ claims
by Grace Ormsby
The NSW Bar Association has expressed its concern around claims alleging judicial overreach in a recent NSW decision to disallow the development of a Hunter Valley mine.
The outcome of Gloucester Resources Ltd v Minister for Planning, as considered by Chief Justice Brian Preston, has seen media coverage call the decision “a worrying example of judicial overreach” and “against the national interest”, which the association highlighted in a statement released on 13 February…

NSW Bar Association president Tim Game SC explained that “in assessing such a development application the court is required to take into account many factors including environmental impact”.
“The Chief Judge, referring to relevant legislative provisions, planning instruments and case law, gave detailed reasons as to why he was obliged to consider climate change in that environmental assessment,” he noted, before he acknowledged that Chief Justice Preston would have been in error had he failed to do so.

“Expert scientific evidence of the impact the mine would have on climate change was before the court and both sides made submissions as to its relevance and weight,” Mr Game SC continued.
“In a 700-paragraph judgment, climate change was one factor (albeit a significant one) amongst many factors the Chief Judge considered.”
In the long and detailed judgement, the president also explained that the judge had refused the application “for its significant and unacceptable planning, visual and social impacts”.
“The green-house gas emissions provided a further reason for refusal.”

In the statement from the association, the president also called out “an attack on the character of the Chief Judge” by one newspaper, that had referred to the Chief Judge as having co-founded the Environmental Defenders Office (which represented a party in the proceedings) and made reference to extra-judicial papers given by the Chief Judge that may give an impression of bias on the subject of climate change.
Mr Game SC called the referral “troubling”, despite the association’s acknowledgement that the newspaper was nevertheless “appropriately eschewing an assertion of bias”, according to the NSW Bar.

“The Chief Judge’s remarkable and extensive career within the land and environment jurisdiction highlights his commitment, expertise and suitability as a judicial officer of the court,” Mr Game SC continued.
“If there was any concern about judicial bias, it was open to the parties to raise that and ask the judge to recuse himself, as the Attorney-General Mark Speakman SC has already noted,” he then explained.https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/wig-chamber/25026-nsw-bar-shuts-down-judicial-overreach-claims

How NSW taxes are used to fight Greenie war
Daily Telegraph-13 hours ago
Resources Minister Matt Canavan has called for taxpayer funding to be pulled from a NSW ecoactivist lawyers group trying to block projects across…
NSW Bar Association president Tim Game has praised the judge who … Chief Judge Brian Preston’s links to the legal representatives of the …

the writer writes for The Australian, but I haven’t found this on their website so far:

13 Feb: US News & World Report: Australia Debates a Climate Strategy
Most people agree that action is needed, yet no consensus exists on a workable strategy.
By Geoff Hiscock
(Geoff Hiscock is a Sydney-based journalist with a focus on international business, particularly across the Asia-Pacific. He is the author of the book, “Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources.”)
SYDNEY – A verdict rendered in a Sydney courtroom last Friday underscores how climate change and the past several months of weather catastrophes across Australia are influencing opinion across this country. On Feb. 8, an Australian court for the first time invoked climate change as a reason to reject a proposed coal mine…ETC

That the ruling became the first time a court in this country cited climate change as a reason to reject development is historic. Perhaps more noteworthy, however, is the court’s position stood against Australia’s most lucrative export, coal, showing just how heavily worries over the impact of global warming are weighing on both the public and policymakers.

Coal is Australia’s single most valuable export item, worth 66 billion Australian dollars (roughly $47 billion) in 2018. Most thermal coal is shipped to Asian markets, and a big new export mine proposed by India’s Adani group for the Galilee coal basin in north Queensland has so far been delayed by environmental protests.
Coal is part of a fossil fuel sector so valuable that it largely shielded Australia from the degree of economic pain that the great global recession of 2008-09 afflicted on the world’s other wealthy countries…

But extreme weather events are making even valuable industries subject to scrutiny. In the past year the possible markers of climate change in Australia include a once-every-200-year flood in the tropical north; bush fires and devastating drought in the south; fish dying by the millions in oxygen-starved inland rivers; farms ruined by crop failure and livestock losses; big cities brought to a standstill by windstorms; and lightning strikes on power grids and transport systems.
Add to those events the daily unrelenting heat as the Southern Hemisphere summer grinds on.

The dilemma for Australia’s political leaders is to identify whether those events are a snapshot of climate change in action, or to see them simply as part of the ongoing weather cycle. Most mainstream political parties, peak business and farming groups and energy providers are now in tune with the environmental groups that have led the debate on climate change.

Public opinion in Australia is also focused on the changing climate. A global survey conducted in 26 countries and released on Sunday shows how climate change is seen today as the greatest threat to international security. Australians name it as the top security threat.
But exactly what to do next remains a vexed question in Australian society.

Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Alan Finkel, put it succinctly when he addressed academics and students in Brisbane recently: “The science is clear: Stop using fossil fuels.” Then, he added: “But society is also clear: We need energy.”
Finkel once proposed nuclear energy to replace the fossil fuels – primarily coal and gas – that underpin baseline power generation in much of Australia, but that is unpopular for most of the Australian population and the body politic.
“The solutions to a global problem are not acceptable at the local level,” Finkel said in his address to the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences. “We need to develop breakthrough technologies while simultaneously persuading billions of people to change the way we live.”

Technology, Data May Improve Weather Forecasting
A technological breakthrough can’t come soon enough for the 170-plus permanent inhabitants and the thousands of visitors who pass through Marble Bar, a town in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. Since the start of December, Marble Bar has endured 10 weeks of stifling heat where the temperature has been above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for all but six days. On Dec. 27, it reached a record high of 49.3 degrees Celsius followed by 49.1 C on Jan. 13.

With doctors warning that prolonged exposure to temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius can bring on heat stroke, air conditioners are working overtime in this Outback community. The recent heat wave isn’t the first time Marble Bar has been in the record books. Between the end of October 1923 and early April 1924, the town endured 160 days when the temperature was 37.8 degrees Celsius or above.

Across Australia, January 2019 was the hottest month on record, with a mean temperature exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. But being “on record” covers a relatively short range of data held by Australia’s government weather agency, the Bureau of Meteorology. Its standardized records date back only to 1908, though it has non-standard information going back another 120 years to the start of European settlement.

Conclusions from any earlier periods must rely on natural evidence such as tree rings, core samples from the ocean floor and coral skeletons, or defer to indigenous Australians’ “Dreamtime” stories on past weather events. Indigenous peoples and Torres Strait Islanders have lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years, and their stories tell of icy times many years ago. Scientific research confirms an ice age arrived in these lands 20,000 years ago and lasted about 5,000 years. Average temperatures fell by 10 degrees Celsius and rainfall decreased. When warmer times resumed, rising sea levels separated Papua New Guinea and the island of Tasmania from mainland Australia.

***Australian scientist Jennifer Marohasy, a skeptic of human-induced climate change and a prominent critic of the Bureau of Meteorology’s work, says using “big data” and artificial intelligence could lead to better long-range weather and climate forecasts. She advocates using artificial intelligence to mine historical climate data for patterns, and then construct statistical models to use in forecasts…

Andrew Bolt on Sky tonite interviewed Guy Pearce, a dam engineer, who claimed water should have been released much earlier:

Confusion over role of Ross River Dam
Courier Mail-21 hours ago
FORMER Premier Campbell Newman has called for an independent commission inquiry into the Townsville floods to assess how the emergency was managed.
The State Government last week announced, the Inspector General Emergency Management, would conduct a review, however Mr Newman called for an independent inquiry, insisting it needed to be at arm’s length from government…

Ross River Dam operators ‘inadequately’ trained, engineer says
Courier Mail-12 Feb 2019
“Ross River Dam is a water supply dam and although it has some ability to … “Sunwater is not required to provide flood mitigation advice or advisory … The Bureau of Meteorology website says the dam was constructed for …

Shine Lawyers considering Townsville floods class action
The Adelaide Advertiser-4 minutes ago
This is despite numerous websites, including the Bureau of Meteorology’s, citing the dam as having been built for flood mitigation and water storage…

13 Feb: UK Telegraph: EU leaves door open to Russian gas pipeline to Germany
By Jillian Ambrose
The EU appears to have left the door open for Gazprom’s controversial gas pipeline project to pour more Russian gas into Europe.
The European Commission on Wednesday struck a provisional deal with the European Parliament and the EU’s 28 member states to tighten the rules on gas imports into the bloc.
The new rules will govern all import pipelines, including Gazprom’s planned Nord Stream 2 project, to guard member states against unfair tariffs or anti-competitive practices…

One of the key points rules out gas suppliers from owning the pipeline infrastructure transporting their gas into the EU. However, the EU-wide rules leave enough wriggle room for Germany to approve exceptions, which is likely to include a derogation for the Nord Stream 2 project. They also remove the opportunity for Denmark, which opposes the pro ject, to veto its route through Danish waters to Germany.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/02/13/eu-leaves-door-open-russian-gas-pipeline-germany/

13 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Ireland needs new oil and gas fields to ease reliance on Brexit UK, say drillers
Oil and gas explorers are gearing up to drill offshore Ireland in a bid to boost its energy independence from Britain
By Sara Stefanini in Dublin
(Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation)
Ireland imports all of its oil and around a third of its natural gas – mostly from the UK – and the gas imports are set to rise as the country’s offshore Corrib reserve runs out over the next 12 years, according to the Irish Offshore Operators’ Association (IOOA).
Now, uncertainty around Britain’s future relationship with the EU is adding urgency to the industry’s calls for drilling and infrastructure projects that can bolster Ireland’s energy independence
“Ireland’s geographical location at the edge of Europe makes us extremely vulnerable to any potential disruption to energy supplies,” Pat Shannon, the IOOA’s chairman, told Climate Home News…
The association published a report (LINK) in January highlighting Ireland’s reliance on foreign oil and gas. It noted that even its biggest supplier, Britain, depends increasingly on imports from the European Union, Norway and Russia…

New investment in domestic oil and gas would also put Dublin in an awkward position, after lawmakers voted last summer to make the country the first to fully divest its sovereign wealth fund from fossil fuels…

The Irish Green Party’s leader, Eamon Ryan, dismissed the claims that the country needs domestic oil and gas.
“This industry is like an addict, it just wants one last fix, and it will tell you anything and do anything and try anything to get that fix,” Ryan, a former energy and natural resources minister, told CHN. “They’re chasing the dragon, they’re chasing the wrong way. We should be using Irish waters to develop offshore wind farms… that’s what has to change to take the climate seriously, and Brexit is not going to change that one way or the other.”…

13 Feb: France24: AFP: EU moves ahead with Russia gas pipeline despite US opposition
The European Union pushed ahead Wednesday with an agreement that will allow Russia to continue to build a new gas pipeline to Europe, despite US warnings it posed a security risk.
The EU’s revised gas directive aims to establish common gas market rules for pipelines entering the bloc from a third country, with all the focus on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 project which will pipe gas to Germany…

Negotiators for the European Parliament and EU countries struck a provisional political agreement Tuesday night on the rules that recognise Germany’s lead role in the pipeline while putting it under EU oversight.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will double the capacity to ship gas from Russia to Germany via the waters of Finland, Sweden and Denmark.
But the pipeline has faced opposition from many countries in eastern and central Europe, the United States and particularly Ukraine because it risks increasing Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas…

“The new rules ensure that EU law will be applied to pipelines bringing gas to Europe and that everyone interested in selling gas to Europe must respect European energy law,” EU energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said Wednesday…
The pipeline project got a new lease on life last week after France, which had demanded EU oversight, struck a compromise with Germany…
The legislation must still be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the member countries.https://www.france24.com/en/20190213-eu-moves-ahead-with-russia-gas-pipeline-despite-us-opposition

11 Feb: EurActiv: Cañete sees gas as ‘a bridge’ to reach EU’s clean energy goals
By Frédéric Simon
Natural gas will remain “an important component” of the EU’s energy mix for decades to come, but its role will evolve by the mid-century to become a “complement” to wind and solar power, the EU’s energy chief has said in comments that has ruffled feathers in the industry.

Gas will play “an important role in the energy transition” and help Europe meet its ambitious target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, said Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU’s commissioner for climate action and energy.
“But we will not be able to get to 100% renewables overnight,” he told delegates at the 4th EU-Norway energy conference last week (5 February).
“Natural gas offers the flexibility that can complement variable electricity generation coming from renewables” such as wind and solar power, Cañete explained…

“As the share of intermittent renewable energy grows in Europe, the need for balancing power will become more important,” (Kjell-Børge Freiberg, Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy) pointed out, saying gas can handle large variations in energy supply and demand, especially during winter when heating demand reaches its peak…
That is good news for Norway, which exported a record amount of gas to Europe last year, offsetting in part the collapse in production coming from the giant Groningen gas field in the Netherlands…

13 Feb: Guardian: Labour to set out plans to decarbonise UK and fulfil green jobs pledge
Party says Labour government would tackle climate change by starting economic revolution
by Matthew Taylor
Labour is to set out how the UK can move swiftly to a decarbonised future to tackle the unfolding climate crisis and put “meat on the bones” of its promise to create hundreds of thousands of high-skilled, unionised green jobs.
Trade unionists and industry leaders will come together with academics, engineers and public institutions to build detailed regional plans setting out the challenges and opportunities ahead.

The proposal, due to be outlined on Wednesday by ***Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, will involve a national call for evidence and a series of regional events to build “a detailed action plan” to maximise the benefits of moving to a zero-carbon future…
She said a future Labour government would oversee an economic revolution to tackle the climate crisis, using the full power of the state to decarbonise the economy and create hundreds of thousands of green jobs in struggling towns and cities across the UK…
Labour’s pitch echoes the Green New Deal that is gaining ground in the US, backed by leftwing Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders…

Labour says a key plank of its plan will be to ensure a “just transition” to high quality green jobs for those currently working in carbon-emitting industries. To do that it will have to persuade its trade union backers, who represent people in high-carbon industries, that there is a viable economic alternative…
Long-Bailey told the Guardian last year that the climate crisis was “incredibly dangerous” and said the UK’s entire society and economy needed to be refocused to meet the looming challenge…
“This is not a blithe promise,” she said. “This is about the jobs at the end of your road. From the Clyde to the Humber to the Mersey. This about our future.”https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/labour-plan-decarbonise-uk-green-jobs-climate-crisis

you only need to look at the pic of AOC to see how BBC is helping to create the AOC legend – she’s so brilliant that, just a month and a bit into her job, she is on her way to transforming the entire US economy in about a decade!

12 Feb: BBC: Green New Deal : Can this plan pushed by some Democrats really work?
By Matt McGrath
Despite being labelled as a “socialist manifesto”, the Green New Deal (GND) on climate change and jobs has sparked a lively debate in US politics. So what’s in the deal and what will be its likely impact?…
It firmly and deliberately sets out to echo the past glories of FDR and the economic New Deal of the 1930s…

The plan is built around the recent warnings from scientists about the impacts on the planet of a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius this century, above pre-industrial levels.
Climate change would cost the US around $500bn a year in lost economic output, and risk trillions of dollars damage to infrastructure.
By 2050 wildfires will likely burn at least twice as much forest area in the western states than was typically burned in the years preceding 2019.
But as well as outlining the damage that climate change might bring, the GND links these threats to ongoing issues such as clean water, healthy food, adequate healthcare and education that are “inaccessible to a significant proportion of the United States population.”…

To meet these challenges the document proposes a number of radical steps.
The one making the biggest headlines is the 10-year decarbonisation of the US economy. This would be incredibly difficult to achieve without some sort of major technology advance…

PIC: A hydroelectric dam in Costa Rica, which is one of the cleanest countries in the world

The New Green Deal also calls for all existing and new buildings to be upgraded to achieve maximum energy efficiency. Transport needs to be overhauled to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions…
However it goes well beyond questions of climate change, calling on the government to “guarantee a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
The need to help “frontline and vulnerable communities,” who work in greenhouse gas intensive industries to transition to greener jobs is also seen as a key priority…

PIC Young people in many countries have been striking in protest at inaction on climate change .

However it would be a mistake to see the plan as a utopian pipe dream designed to wind-up Republicans.
Opinion polling in the US shows levels of concern over climate issues have never been higher.
There is also a growing global movement, led mainly by young people, for whom the Green New Deal is exactly the type of action they believe is urgently needed. Many scientists feel the same.
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has shown, in her short time in politics, that she is a formidable operator, who should not be underestimated…

“This is an agenda setting exercise,” Sarah Ladislaw from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies told BBC News.
“It basically recognises two fundamental problems – economic insecurity/inequality and climate change. There are lots of ways to address those issues that span the ideological spectrum. Hopefully the debate about which combination of policy approaches comes next.”https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47198581

on the other hand, here’s a typical BBC view of Sarah Palin – written when she came out for Donald Trump:

Jan 2016: BBC: Sarah Palin: The ‘hockey mom’ with political stardust
Her entry on the national stage came very suddenly, when she was the surprise choice as running mate to Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain.
Until then, the 47-year-old self-described “hockey mom” had only served two years as governor of Alaska. Her previous job was mayor of a small town…
Sarah Heath Palin – a former local beauty queen – was born in 1964 in Sandpoint, Idaho…

But the McCain campaign was soon accused of failing to vet her adequately.
The news of her unmarried 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy dominated the opening days of the convention.
Mrs Palin was also revealed to be under investigation by state lawmakers over alleged abuse of power…
An independent investigator hired by the state personnel board later cleared her.
Gaffe-filled interviews were seized on by critics as evidence that she was not up to the job.
In one she cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as evidence of her foreign policy credentials; in another she appeared unsure of the vice-president’s role…
PIC: Tina Fey’s ‘Sarah Palin’ outfit worn during the comedy show Saturday Night Live on display

It was all catnip to primetime comedians, and some members of her own party rounded on her…
Reports emerged that more than $300,000 had been spent on clothes, accessories and stylists for Mrs Palin and her family…
After a lone gunman shot Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, in January 2011, Mrs Palin’s critics tried to blame her.
Her political action committee had drawn cross-hairs on a map to metaphorically target Democratic lawmakers who had voted for President Barack Obama’s healthcare bill…https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11310773

Carbon Brief: Climate change has long been a “particularly knotty challenge for journalists,” writes Dr James Painter, a research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, in a “review essay” looking at recent scholarship on whether the current state of environmental or climate journalism is “up to the enormity of the task”.
***“The need for a new climate could hardly be more urgent,” he concludes. “The challenge for journalism is unprecedented too.”

to James Painter, Reuters: we definitely need a change of “climate” writers!

The Green New Deal is what Realistic Environmental Policy Looks Like
New York Times – 2h ago

Opinion: Pretend It’s Aliens
New York Times – 17h ago
“The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells is the most terrifying book I have ever read. … Even for people who do believe in global warming, pretending that aliens are attacking the earth accomplishes a neat mental …

13 Feb: Guardian: Composer Laura Bowler: my journey to the end of the world
The composer sailed to Antarctica to write a piece about climate change. She was overwhelmed by eerie silence, startling beauty – and the stench of penguin poo
by Laura Bowler
In recent years my work has become more and more socially and politically engaged – a colleague recently described it as “activist composition”. I’ve written a multimedia saxophone concerto challenging society’s ideas of femininity, I’ve written about anorexia, and I’ve tackled female boxing (which meant learning to box). My newest work is no different. I need to feel a sense of ownership and visceral experience of whatever it is that I’m writing about, so for a project focusing on climate change, it felt essential to find a way to get to the remotest and most untouched part of our planet – Antarctica…https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/feb/13/antarctica-laura-bowler-climate-change-music

13 Feb: YaleClimateConnections: Climate Advice (Ask Sara): ‘I feel guilty about flying, but I have a sick relative and a wedding coming up. Help!’
By Sara Peach
Advice for a reader who is worried about the climate impact of air travel…READ ON

report from the left think tank – Institute for Public Policy Research in London – conference:

13 Feb: BusinessGreen: Crisis? What crisis? That crisis. That crisis there.
by James Murray
James Murray reflects on a dispiriting and inspiring day, as IPPR declares #ThisIsACrisis
Should we call the interlocking challenges presented by escalating climate risks, accelerating biodiversity loss, and related economic and security threats a ‘crisis’? That was the question that dominated proceedings at a conference hosted yesterday by IPPR to mark the launch of the think tank’s sweeping new report on the interlocking environmental cataclysms we now face.

It was, of course, a leading question given the official title of the conference was ‘Responding to Environmental Breakdown’ and the hashtag for the event was #ThisIsACrisis. The temptation was to reply to the question ‘is this a crisis?’ with the answer, ‘yes, next question’. There were a handful of dissenting voices (more of which later), but concurring with the event’s central premise proved a temptation few of the panelists – your correspondent included – were able to resist.

Are we facing a crisis? Well, as the IPPR report pointed out, since 1950 the number of floods has increased by a factor of 15, extreme temperature events by a factor of 20, and wildfires seven-fold, top soils are being lost at a worrying rate, and the 20 warmest years since records began have been in the past 22 years.

You could add, and I did, that hundreds of people died recently in wildfires in California, the UN says the first spike in global hunger this century is being exacerbated by climate change, biodiversity seems to be in chronic decline, we are on track to lose 95 per cent of the world’s corals within a handful of decades, and our tax takes and pensions are dependent on revenues from an industry that is likely incompatible with human civilisation continuing in anything like its current form in the latter part of this century.

If that does not amount to a crisis, what does?…

Opening today’s conference Professor Chris Rapley offered one explanation for the reluctance to call a crisis a crisis: good old fashioned academic caution combined with a psychological survival instinct. “Climate scientists have been the most effective at disavowing what we know, because if we think about what we know it gets very scary,” he conceded, adding that there is a constant desire to focus on computer screens and ice samples, “because we know when we look at what they show we see it is very, very scary – it is a crisis”…READ ON

An alternative explanation for the failure to give environmental breakdown the ‘crisis’ treatment came from Labour’s Clive Lewis, who argued it is difficult for politicians to reach for the word when it contains such an obvious tacit condemnation of the economic and political system that has held sway for decades.
“If you accept we have a crisis then it is an admission the system you are adhering to is flawed,” he said, adding that the logical next step from that conclusion is that you urgently need a new approach to politics and economics that is “bold, big, and radical”…

It is notable IPPR’s report came as Labour provided the clearest hint yet (LINK GUARDIAN RLB) it is planning its own Green New Deal style climate action blitz…

As climate change lawyer and Extinction Rebellion activist Farhana Yamin noted yesterday in a hard-hitting address, “there’s something in the air – a sense that we have to get a bit radical”, before quickly adding that one of the things British society should be most proud of is its pragmatic ability to deliver “profound change, peacefully”…

As Zenghelis observed in an explanation of Paul Romer’s Nobel Prize-winning endogenous growth theory, it is possible for policy and innovation to interact in a way that unlocks a better, cleaner, and more productive economy, which builds support for bolder policies and innovation, which in turn leads to a better, cleaner, and more productive economy, and so on. The virtuous circle can deliver change far faster than economists expect…https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3070955/crisis-what-crisis-that-crisis-that-crisis-there

The IPCC says we should have a target of 50% of our energy from renewables, and the Climate Change believers agree. But what does the 50% target mean. Does it mean we build a renewable energy system that can provide 50% of our renewable energy under ideal conditions, which means the 50% target will hardly ever be achieved. Or does it mean we build a renewable energy system capable of providing say 70% or more of our energy requirements from renewable sources under ideal conditions, and therefore we can possibly meet our 50% target under less than ideal conditions.

And what does ideal conditions mean. The primary sources of renewable energy are solar, and wind with some hydro, so ideal conditions probably means long sunny and windy days in summer. Such days are probably hot as well. In other words the sorts of days that we in the southern states had a couple of weeks ago and the sorts of days that Climate Change believers keep telling us are caused by climate change.

And to build such a system we would probably need to rely on BOM forecasts of sun, wind, temperature, rainfall etc. We know how reliable the BOM is with temperature and rainfall, are their wind predictions as reliable.

The 50% target is similar to the current target of 33,000 GWhr of “renewables” per year, so an average across the year.
Across the AEMO grid, average power generation is 24 GW. To meet 50% target therefore requires 12 GW of “renewables” on average.
Note that peak power generation required is 34 GW.
Hydro provides a reliable 2 GW of that “renewables” target.
Therefore wind/solar must provide 10 GW on average.
If we split that 10 GW 50/50 between wind and solar, allow 30% capacity factor for wind and 17% for solar, nameplate capacities required are:
Wind 17 GW
Solar 29 GW
Wow, oodles of capacity, but spot the problems?
At noon with wind/solar delivering say 60% of nameplate capacity, that’s 28 GW of generated power, more than the typical midday demand of 20 GW. But wind/solar by themselves are unstable, so their delivery must be curtailed, and at least 6 GW must come from other sources, or vast amounts of pumped hydro/big batteries are required (SA “big” battery 0.1 GW for 70 minutes).
At peak summer evening demand of 34 GW, and perhaps only 2 GW from wind/solar on a near windless day, and peak hydro of 5 GW, reliable coal and gas must be ready to supply 27 GW. (assume 80 % capacity factor, so 34 GW nameplate)
At average demand of 24 GW and 2 GW from wind/solar and 2 GW from hydro, reliable coal/gas must supply 20 GW.

Thanks to Tony’s excellent daily reports I have been watching how daily peak demand is met. I focused on Jan 22 as a day of very high demand of 35.2 GW at about 1630, and still 33.8 GW at 1800, and used Anero.id to look at how those demands were met.
Coal 19.7, 19.8 GW
Gas 6.5, 7.1 GW
Hydro 3.8, 4.0 GW
Wind 1.6, 1.6 GW
Large solar 1.1, 0.5 GW
Roof solar 2.5, 0.8 GW
Total 35.2, 33.8 GW
So wind and solar contributed just 5.2 GW or 15% of demand at 1630, and 2.9 GW or 8.5% at 1800 hours from a nameplate capacity of about 15 GW. And that was an average day for wind, on some days it drops below 0.5 GW.
Coal and gas delivered a peak of 26.9 GW or 80% of demand at 1800 from a nameplate capacity of 34.7 GW for a 78% capacity factor.
Now tell me again how the grid will remain reliable meeting peak demands if Liddell 2 GW, or Loy Yang 3 GW close down.
Even if wind/solar nameplate capacity is doubled to 30 GW, they may still only deliver 2-3 GW when urgently required.